Sex is the reality, gender is the construct.Women are from Venus, men are from Mars.

Probably the two most basic truisms that Laqueur's book seeks to mSex is the reality, gender is the construct.Women are from Venus, men are from Mars.

Probably the two most basic truisms that Laqueur's book seeks to most closely examine, if not destroy.

When did we start thinking of men and women as being opposites?

Currently, more people are willing to consider the idea of men and women (alternatively, masculinity and femininity) as steps or shades on a scale, even more broadly, as a sphere, as opposed to two opposite and mutually exclusive camps. Which would make one believe that in the past, gender was even MORE antipolar... Laqueur tries to show via a myriad examples how this may not be so.

At one point, his evidence argues, men and women were seen as versions of each other (I should say women as versions of imperfect or not quite formed men) and genitalia analogous (so ovaries were female testes; vaginas inverted penises...). Essentially, there was one sex (with versions)...as opposed to two totally distinct separate sexes standing opposite.

What came first, the gender or the sex? Laqueur shows many examples in which the reality of sex may possibly be just as tenuous and subject to "social thuggery" as the reality of gender--now as well as back then....